Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley

like he’s trying as hard as he can to block the sound of my voice.
    Tonight’s going to be one of those things that seem to last forever. Maybe even longer than an after-winter wax. Leo and Jazz are laughing; I hear it emptying into the street. For Jazz, at least, time’ll be moving differently. For that week after Ed asked me out and before we went on the date I felt like the world was heated glass and I was glad to be trapped.
    Ed’s still tapping his hands on his legs and not talking when we reach the station. Dylan stops and points to the sky. It takes me a couple of seconds to see what he’s pointing at but finally I do and I want to cut out what I see and take it home so I can keep it close.
    ‘That’s one of Shadow’s?’ Jazz asks. ‘I like it.’
    ‘You’ll like Poet’s stuff too,’ Leo says. ‘They usually work together.’
    Ed gives him a dirty look. Leo grins. Dylan twitches. It feels like something’s going on, I think loudly, and I know that Jazz hears my thought because she gives me her serious look and blows a chewing-gum bubble in my direction.
    ‘Everyone stop acting weird,’ Daisy says. ‘It’s freaking me out.’
    An announcement tells us that the train is running five minutes late so while they walk through to the platform I stay for a bit longer. On a wall in the distance, under a light from a tower, is Shadow’s piece. It’s a painted night sky that’s faded at the edges so I can see the wall underneath it. Painted birds fly across, hit the line where the sky blurs into brick, and turn back. Their feathers glow. Moon birds trapped on a brick sky. They’re not dirtied by the world; from here they look more beautiful than the real ones flying around them.
    I turn and see Ed watching me watching. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Train’s coming.’

Ed
     
     
    I painted those birds a while back. Took a chance early in the morning, on the way to open the store. The light coming over the buildings was burning back the night. I didn’t have to climb high. Just sat on a fence with a couple of real birds lined up beside me and did the whole thing above eye level. Balancing was the hard part. There was this one real crow laughing the whole time I worked, and as I did the last line he flew across the wall and into the sky. He circled back once, like he was saying, See? It’s easy when you figure out how.
    Feels like art’s the only thing I ever figured out. Words, school, I never got the whole picture. I’d sit there trying to block the sounds of scraping chairs and the other kids. I’d try to make a tunnel round the teacher’s voice so it came to me clear. Most days I couldn’t do it. I’d hear it all and so I’d hear nothing. Like I was standing in a place where every sound was the same level and I couldn’t separate the threads. Like every door in the world was open and the sound was pouring in.
    I couldn’t have got through to Year 10 without Leo. He helped me read and I gave him a place to crash and neither of us needed to know why. I went round to his place once when I was in Year 5. He opened the door and behind him I heard waves of music and yelling. When I think back to that day I hear the zoo. The sounds of things getting out of their cages. He shut the door and we didn’t say what I’d heard. We walked away.
    He stayed at my place that night. I was almost asleep when he started talking from the floor beside me. About how he didn’t like the smell of beer. About how he liked that my house was quiet. He said sometimes he didn’t like sleeping because he dreamt. In the dark I told him about the open doors in the world and how I couldn’t do the assignment that was due.
    Before he went home the next day he asked to see what I’d done and I showed him and he fixed it for me. Didn’t change anything. Just made it readable. He did that to every assignment from then on.
    The pieces I paint come out of my head right. No spellcheck required. I hear people talking about the